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Testimonies for the Church Volume 1
you have been absent. This has excited your sympathy, and had a
tendency to pervert your judgment, so that you have placed too high an
estimate upon her qualifications because of her capability in managing
your temporal matters. Satan has been watching his opportunity to
make as much as possible to his own advantage of your confidence
in your wife. He has purposed to trammel you and destroy you both.
You have to a great degree thrown off your stewardship upon your
wife. This is wrong; she will have all she can do to bear her share of
the responsibility, without bearing that which comes upon you and for
which God will hold you accountable.
Sister D has been deceived in some things. She has thought that
God instructed her in a special sense, and you both have believed
and acted accordingly. The discernment which she has thought she
possessed in a special sense, is a deception of the enemy. She is
naturally quick to see, quick to understand, quick to anticipate, and is
of an extremely sensitive nature. Satan has taken advantage of these
traits of character and has led you both astray. Brother D, you have
been a bondman for quite a length of time. Much of that which Sister D
has thought was discernment has been jealousy. She has been disposed
to regard everything with a jealous eye, to be suspicious, surmising evil,
distrustful of almost everything. This causes unhappiness of mind,
despondency, and doubt, where faith and confidence should exist.
These unhappy traits of character turn her thoughts into a gloomy
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channel, where she indulges a foreboding of evil, while a highly
sensitive temperament leads her to imagine neglect, slight, and injury,
when it does not exist. All these things stand in the way of the spiritual
advancement of you both, and affect others to just that extent that you
are connected with the cause and work of God. There is a work for
you to do: Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that
you may be exalted in due time. These unhappy traits of character,
with a strong, set will, must be corrected and reformed, or they will
eventually cause you both to make shipwreck of your faith.
Brother D, you have a duty to do. Assume the stewardship you
have resigned, and in the fear of God take your place at the head of
your family. You must be shaken from the influence of your wife, and
rely more fully upon God, and look to Him to lead you and guide you.
God has not specially instructed Sister D, or given her light to teach
others their duty. Neither you nor your wife can occupy the position